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Cosmaca (CCW)
What started as a system of ethics and philosophy for the proper use of magecraft has developed over the past thousand years into a full-fledged institutional religion with several denominations. Cosmaca, the state religion of nearly every major human power, is rooted in temperance and balance, paramount virtues in a world where humanity has overthrown its own gods. Cosmaca places life on earth in the context of an infinite universe and acknowledges that not only magic, but civilized society and individual identity are fragile, potentially fleeting endeavors. It calls its followers to examine and regulate themselves in the light of three great paradoxes, in order to maintain mortal and eternal peace: I. I am Nothing. I am Everything. II. We are Certain. We are Uncertain. III. There is Truth. There is no Truth. While hundreds of fringe sects exist and diverge from these philosophies, the major Cosmacan traditions do share core beliefs and practices. Namely, the existence of an agnostic higher order whose expression is experienced through the four fundamental forces: cosmic, primal, ethereal, and civic. All Cosmacan denominations also believe in the unpersonafiable and impersonal nature of this higher order, and most believe that it is also ultimately unknowable to any meaningful degree. Cosmacans hold that the four fundamental forces are all encompassing and that our existence is a temporary moment in their interactions. Most philosophy and practice revolves around the efforts and ethics of maintaining a balance between the forces to preserve the existence of human/evinkin ego. With a few exceptions, worship, ceremony, and gatherings across Cosmaca take place under domes or dome-like structures ornamented with literal or figurative representations of the four fundamental forces. For example, the dome itself usually represents or reveals the firmament of the sky, and therefore the presence of the Cosmic force. The design and size of the dome as well as the practices that take place within them vary greatly according to some very important differences between Cosmacan denominations. Theological Differences Disagreements between major Cosmacan sects usually happens along three contentious issues: I. The definition/knowability of the higher order, or the Credal position of the church. II. The degree to which ego itself can or should be maintained, i.e. an Existential position. III. The derivation and structure of moral and ethical authority in society, i.e. a Doctrinal position. When it comes to Credal and Existential positions, denominations fall along a spectrum between the negative and the imperative, with an agnostic position in the center. Credally imperative churches, for example, believe the higher order can be defined and known to some degree, while an existentially negative church might believe that no effort should be made to preserve the existence of human ego. An agnostic church on either of these spectrums takes no explicit position. When it comes to ethical and moral authority there are two issues to consider: first, the derivation of authority i.e. who or what gives legitimacy to authority. And second, the structure of that authority i.e. who it is that sets down ethical and moral guidelines for the whole church. For example, a church can be doctrinally manufactured, believing that human intellect is responsible for creating law and regulation. Or on the other end of the spectrum, a church might be doctrinally derived, believing instead that ethical truths are inherent in nature and are only received and interpreted by humans. The same church may also be doctrinally hierarchical, with a top down structure by which the interpretations are passed down and enforced by church officials. Or the church may be doctrinally consensual, meaning a more democratic or organic consensus is reached among the lay and clergy alike. More agnostic positions are also taken on both spectrums, especially by churches that are not state-run or state-sanctioned. Here is a quick view of the positions taken by major Cosmacan denominations: Keaslians The Congregational Faith Official: Church of Keaslior The First War against the Gods began long before humans stood a chance, waged not by a great empire or upstart power, but by the tiny kingdom of Keaslior, so crushed into oblivion that no one is sure where it actually was. But while the kingdom was lost, the cause lived on in the Order of the Knights of Keaslior which, in one form or another, lasted all the way through the Second and Third Wars. Somewhere during this time, the order became less military and more religious; a veneration of the early martyrs and a moral authority on how to keep human rulers from becoming like the gods who had oppressed them. With the advent of magecraft during the Third War, the latter mission became all the more urgent and the Church of Keaslior was born. Keaslians were the first, for instance, to proclaim that the knowledge of magecraft would never be restricted to any one class of people—that all who proved worthy would be free to learn. This is still a core tenant of almost every major Keaslian denomination. The Keaslian faith is the oldest of the Cosmacan faiths and still close in practice to the Order it evolved from. It is highly decentralized and diverse, with each local Chapter writing their own creeds and voting on their own doctrines. Despite this empowerment of local authority, beliefs among Keaslians don’t differ too greatly from one another. They all draw from the relatively short Book of the Wars, an account of the first two Wars against the Gods, and Chapter delegates periodically meet for regional and international conferences to make major decisions. Unsurprisingly, Keaslians tend to emphasize the more martial aspects of faith such as valor, fellowship, and self-sacrifice; celebrated through stories, hymns, and memorialization of the dead. This last point is particularly important; many Keaslians believe recounting stories of dead loved ones and preserving key objects from their life can carry their qualities into the next generation. This is all done by loved ones after one’s death, of course. To Keaslians, the greatest threats to personal and collective humanity are pride, tyranny, and ostentation. Though it originated in the Old World city of Kimat, the spread of Keaslianism is thanks mostly to the Makalans, champions of the Third War, who took to it strongly. The faith can be found in all their original colonies, not just in the Eastern Shores, but also in parts of Mathsra and Almantia, Bauyuna, the Pali Malicates, and Midland. In all these places, Keaslian Domes are easily identified by their small stature and unadorned wood or stone construction. These domes function mostly as meeting houses but may also act as reliquaries for artifacts of the First and Second Wars against the gods. Massleans The Esoteric Faith Official: House of Cosmic Apologies. Also known as Aradnians. Maslan is nearly as old as Magecraft itself and therefore its House of Cosmic Apologies is arguably the oldest Cosmacan tradition. Though the House didn’t take on a religious form until about seven hundred years ago (after the Church of Keaslior was founded), the institution's roots can be traced back to ethical texts written by the first generation of mages. Reforms of Aradne By most accounts, Maesic, the inventor of magecraft and founder of the University, was rabidly anti-clerical. He considered religion a blight on human intelligence and was openly dismissive of the goddess Cana, even in her presence. But his favorite pupil and eventual successor, Aradne, recognized the value of direction and purpose in the lives of the masses. Perhaps more importantly, she recognized that magecraft could not survive as long as outsiders associated it with amoral, intellectual elitism. So she decided to add a bit of magic to the magecraft, which to the masses was so technical and dry. Some old-fashioned pretension and obfuscation, she thought, would cloak the unappealing realities of Mage Rule, which in spirit and practice was essentially a schoolyard brawl of insufferable young know-it-alls. Aradne’s reforms were subtle at first. Piece, by piece, she plucked apart Maesic’s centralized and autocratic government and scattered it like petals to the heavens. That is, she created ever more committees and departments which she, during her long tenure as Chief Doctor and Duke of Eastland, gradually dressed in ever finer and more particular robes. She also instituted a variety of sensible little protocols that piled on over the years into hefty traditions, and which have now clustered into barely comprehensible ceremonies with almost no connection to any original purpose. In one instance, what began as a series of bells rung to announce different visitors to Ducal functions is now porcelain jars of oil poured painstakingly into grooves in the floor that lead to small, vaguely bell shaped indents in the tiles lining the receiving bath chambers for guests of honor. All to say, Aradne did much to move Mage rule in the direction of the mysterious and mystical. First Constellatory Synod The illustrious body that recieved the most gratuitous pomp and circumstance was the Committee on the Ethics of Magic which, by the time of her death, had its members wearing tall green hats, and brandishing long, virtuous titles. It was this committee that was instrumental in Aradne’s most enduring act, and that laid the foundation for what would become the Masslean faith. Through a complex web of consultation, deliberation, subcommittee deliberation, and a chain of appointed and electoral colleges at least eight degrees deep, Aradne and her Ethics committee convened the First Constellatory Synod in the last years of her life. The three hundred members of the Synod, chosen from the most brilliant astronomers, philosophers, and poets of the age, were tasked with constructing a comprehensive moral system on which both magical and personal conduct could be based. Aradne specified that the resultant text must be comprehensible to the common citizen, and that its “style must reflect the beauty and elegance of its meaning.” The first round of writing and discussion produced a mound of fat manuscripts, which were then reviewed and synthesized, amended and addended again and again and again. It seemed likely that the process would take years. But then Aradne fell ill. And inexplicably, instead of wishing the project well and departing this life in peace, she ordered everything to halt. Then she did something even more shocking: she took the most recent, incomplete version of the ethical code, split it into twenty one discrete volumes, gave each one to a hand-picked member of the Synod and sent them to twenty-one remote locations on earth, where they would bury their piece and protect it until they died. Aradne then ordered all remaining drafts and copies destroyed and, reportedly, very nearly had the remaining members of the Synod killed. She settled for censure on the pain of death and then promptly died herself. 19th Century Revival By the end of her life, Aradne and what was called her “Cult of the Stars” had become too much for many of her contemporaries. When she was finally gone, many of her reforms were rolled back and her bizarre Constellatory Synod forgotten. But after the collapse of the First Kingdom--which the mages played quite a part in--and the near destruction of Mage Rule by their furious religious neighbors, Aradne was remembered. As Maslan was constructed, so was a new faith, explicit now in its purpose. They quickly embarked on a furious hunt for the scattered volumes and those they found were compiled into what is today known as the Apologies. The most instrumental of those volumes being the Cosmic Apologies, supposedly penned by Aradne herself. The House of Cosmic Apologies, as the new church was named, grew up alongside the New House of Ingair, which was spinning out after being abandoned by its goddess. As the Ingarians began to scrutinize far-flung scraps of holy text for meaning and direction, so did the Massleans. So this is how the Masslean church became the Cosmacan counterpart to the bookish Ingarian faiths. It needed to imitate its fellow Celthestans to regain legitimacy in their eyes. But it was also fervently a Mage-led faith that rejected the authority of the gods and relied on humanist ideals instead. Aradne provided the perfect foundation for how one could do both; how to create a mystical transcendence around human moral authority. Aradne and the First Synod were retroactively canonized; their words, their ceremonies enshrined in the fabric of Mage Rule and the Masslean University. Modern Practice Today, Maslan sticks stubbornly to those figures and traditions. We celebrate Aradne and Octavia, Karim and Leowen--very nearly forgetting Maesic himself, the only name the rest of the world knows. The Apologies, an unfinished text in an only semi-legible state, remains the moral and philosophical law of all magical, personal, and public conduct. The Constellatory Synod, now in its 57th incarnation, is occasionally called to study the old texts, briefly consider new ideas, and make very, very, very minute changes in accordance with the times. Mostly they give way to the Constellatory Assembly, which meets every five years to evaluate, with excruciating deliberativeness, the actions of Maslan’s government against the consensus of the “great thinkers of the past,” canonized as the First Professors of Knowledge. Both bodies meet in a closed, embellished dome of traditional make, with paneled wooden walls and a geometrically patterned ceiling; a single, circular skylight at its peak. Communion tents (dusty rectangular things large enough for a desk and chair) are processed into the mostly dark innards of the dome, and set up in orderly rows. Candles are lit in each tent, volumes of texts, charts, and the latest academic papers are carried in by smartly dressed paiges. Only then do the Professors of the Synod, or Assembly (often permutations of the same couple hundred mages and token non-mages) march in with their highly specific hats and robes. They sit in their tents, reading and writing for hours. The ordinary folks shuffle around the peripheries behind barriers, encouraged to spectate on the majesty and power of the human intellect. Finally, the onlookers are shoed out of the room, the tents carried out with them. The thinkers embark on a circuitous conversational journey, in which each of them is obligated to make a long speech, whether or not they truly have anything to say. Then it’s back to the tents and after that back to the speeches, and back and forth and back and forth again until quiet, unassuming parliamentary mechanisms bring it all to a paltry anticlimax. That is all, of course, at the imperial level. Similar scenes play out in the local domes in all of Masslea. Children are asked to sit in communion with bygone philosophers and consider the ethical implications of their actions. Though, of course, they do this quietly on kneeling benches while the Apologies are shouted at them by at least three Professors at once. Otherwise they might be assigned several volumes of the Apologies to read in one night. Or if they are very lucky, they might be invited to sit in one of the tents themselves and stare at an empty desk. It is all important, of course, that the children learn that the power of moral divination is a power granted to humanity itself, but perhaps not to them specifically. The mysteries of good and evil, of life, death, and suffering--they are all answered before your eyes--though, of course, these answers are rather difficult to comprehend, and, well, perhaps you might come back to it later. Notes: The more permanent Constellatory Tribune exists as well, its main task being the disciplinary oversight of Masslean mages. Thought the Tribune has a much greater impact on daily Masslean life than the Synod or Assembly, it keeps a far lower profile. Aradnianism’s connection to the other, arguably earlier form of Cosmaca, Keaslianism, is hotly debated. The Apologies was written before, but not long before, the Keaslian Church was founded. But the House of Cosmic Apologies itself was founded much later. Its true that the Apologies contains many similarities to the doctrines of the Keaslian church. Could the pre-clerical Keaslians have written some now forgotten texts that landed on the First Synod’s desks? Or perhaps, more likely, the Keaslians and Aradne were simply contemporaries, drawing from a common pool of thinking and knowledge. Ablutionists The Agnostic Faith Official: House of Fools and Beggars. The creed of the Ablutionists is unknowability. Like everything that comes out of Dar-Ness, the House of Fools and Beggars was formed at least in part to oppose Maslan and its House of Cosmic Apologies. After twenty insufferable years of both Mage rule and Mage religion, the Darumels revolted and demanded their own faith, free of the smug certainty and pious deference that characterized the Massleans. Maslan, always careful of its relationship with their largest and most prosperous client city, capitulated—on the condition that the Darumel faith would still be a Cosmacan one. And so a new church was born, one that took the bare tenets of Cosmaca and left it at that. Ablutionists have no priests or church hierarchy, just orderlies who keep the domes. And these domes are nothing like their Aradnian counterparts, holding no services or important gatherings. Most are little more than shrines, large enough for a family or two at a time. And within them are fountains; tall, beautiful, elegant ones, yes, but only in the flagship domes. The large part of the Ablutionist fountains are simple spouts and basins, all to serve a simple ritual, the only ritual in the faith: a daily washing of hands, ears, and face. Interpretations of the Ritual Stories and lessons have sprung up around this single practice, circulated informally within families and community gatherings. Some say it is a meditative cleansing of the senses, a reminder of their limitations and a call to humility. As one well-known aphorism goes: Trust not the eyes or ears to know, Nor hands to harm, release, or hold Ablutionist morality is rooted deeper than perception and thought; it is rooted in an innate sense of connection and action. The ritual washing, according to this school of thought, is best practiced as a family or communal act, to emphasize a dependence on one another for truth and justice. Parents will often wash their children, and vice versa as the children grow into adulthood. Siblings will splash siblings, friends and friends, lovers and lovers. Occasionally, conflicts are even resolved in a rather intimate washing of enemy and enemy. The ritual is also often associated with ideas of renewal and openness. In this school of thought, the washing is a symbolic renewing of the senses; to see, hear, and touch the world with revived vigor and wisdom. And since there is endless truth and vibrancy to the world, this renewing is also an opening of oneself to new ideas and perspectives. This optimistic reading of the ritual has promoted the image of the House as agnostic in the tolerant sense—welcoming other beliefs and institutions into its fold. Many charitable and monastic institutions of the Masslean faith, for example, feeling stifled by the rigidity of the Mage religion, defected to the House of Fools and Beggars. In other cases, Ablutionism is practiced alongside other faiths—especially the faith of the Lycarian Great Mother. This has also meant that the faith itself has not replaced or displaced the House of Cosmic Apologies. The wealthy citizens of Dar Nal Emal side with Maslan and build their own Masslean domes, while also taking part in the daily Ablutions. And the Masslean faith, which shapes the laws and judgements of Maslan, still govern Dar Nal Emal, even when it does not directly control Darumel spiritual life. So then, what is the Darumel spiritual life? Many things and nothing at all. To answer that question or attempt to define the faith at all would go against its core tenet of unknowability. But while Ablutionism and its minimalist orthopraxy is lambasted for being absurdly pluralistic and doctrinally permissive, it doesn’t stand for nothing. In fact, it stands for one thing very clearly. Relationship to Maslan Consider the most public and dramatic ceremony for the House: the Ablution of the Heres. Whenever the ruler and Chief Doctor of Maslan deigns to visit Dar-Ness, he or she must kneel before the Great Fountain in Alfiri Square and enact the ritual before a jeering crowd. Though not necessarily part of the ritual itself, the Heres is always subsequently assaulted by several buckets of water, thrown on them by some brave, young Darumels. If the Heres is especially hated, they may be shoved into the fountain altogether. If this crowning revelry and humiliation reveals anything, it is that, above all, the House of Fools and Beggars exists mainly to resist and insult Maslan. Perhaps even its central ritual was conceived for this purpose. For Dar-Ness after the collapse First Kingdom was sweating with stink and disease, its infrastructure crumbling as a new, shining Mage Capital was being constructed at all expenses. When the Mages finally began to pour some money into Dar Nal Emal, it was marked to build stuffy, dark, pointless Aradnian domes. Halted and redirected after protests and revolts, the stream of Masslean wealth, dedicated to the “moral development” of the Darumels was reappropriated for a new religion, one that happened to require a complete overhaul of the city’s sewage and sanitation—a fountain on every corner for their strange, silly ritual. Notes: Many of the great domes of the Ablutionists are restorations of old temples, dedicated to the old Ingarian protector of Dar Nal Emal, Alfiri (Alphere). Indeed, ritual fountains were integral to the Cult of Alfiri, as were ideas of community, family, and mercy. Certain charitable and monastic orders made a seamless transition from Alpherianism to the House of Fools and Beggars. Ablutionism is widespread outside of Dar Nal Emal as well, especially among Sayrhoul and Oinosi peoples. Santolians '' The Revelatory Faith'' Official: the Church of Santolio Santolianism today is known for its apocalyptic militancy and permissiveness towards magic. Capaliso’s current, seemingly unstoppable campaign for domination of the human race has brought these particularities of their faith to the forefront. Santolians are quick to proclaim their message: that the ego of human civilization is under threat, maintained by a delicate balance only they can manage. That unimpeded magic is the best chance for humanity’s survival. Their minimalist domes are common sights these days: simple open frames, usually in high places bespelled with the best of Capaliso’s cutting-edge infrastructural magic. But all this is the crest on a much larger wave; the culmination of a revolution that began more than six hundred years that saw the end of a unified Keaslian Church and the foundation of the Nationalistic Churches of Capaliso and Sunya. Santolio and the Derivation of Truth The origins of Santolianism lie at the close of the Fourth War against the Gods and its break from the Keaslian Church was the catalyst for the Cosmacan Wars that followed. The burning question of the day was on the derivation of truth—a question which the Keaslians thought they had adequately answered; issues of law and doctrine were decided locally by consensus, manufactured by communities to fit their needs. Truth, believed the Keaslians, was a living vehicle meant to serve and not dictate humanity’s path. But Keaslians underestimated how deeply the loss of the gods was felt among the un-revolutionary common man. The thought that one was to dictate one’s own destiny seemed not only terrifying, but foolhardy and dangerous. Enter a young Anteri by the name of Santolio, a slave during the Fourth War and just the sort of cannon fodder routinely sent to die on the front lines. Scrawny, underfed, neither a mage nor a soldier; his Capalesian masters dispatched him in a wave of expendables, charging towards a Galnean Immortal. But Santolio did not die as so many around him did. By chance or by providence, the Galnean god picked him up and swallowed him whole. There, it is claimed, in the belly of the divine, Santolio experienced a truth beyond both gods and mortals. He made contact with the origin of the four fundamental forces and witnessed the balance of all time and space. He emerged from the throat of his captor, bloody and transformed. As prophets and symbols go, Santolio could not have been more timely or appropriate. The democratization of Truth promised by the Keaslians had only yielded more bloodshed and tyranny. Truth had been monopolized by the elite and the powerful—to fight their wars and fill their coffers, just as the gods had done. Santolio represented the oppressed and misled common folk, who yearned for a Truth that was not manufactured, but experienced. A truth that was inherent in the universe and accessible to all. Juliana and the Martyrdom After escaping the battlefield, Santolio was apprehended as a deserter and sent back to Capaliso to await execution. But he returned an enlightened man, claiming that his contact with the eternal had shown him a new path for humanity. His teachings quickly took hold in the land of his oppressors, especially among the newly enfranchised merchant and agricultural classes. Santolio’s vivid story appealed to their love for mysticism, for jungle tales and flickering shadows. His humble origins appealed to their love of the underdog, their appreciation for the overlooked minority. Crowds gathered outside the naval prison, clamoring to hear him speak and, later, demanding his release. It was ultimately a self-made merchant queen, Juliana, that struck a deal with Santolio’s captors. She bought the young prophet for a hefty sum and then freed him to do as he pleased. But Santolio chose to stay by her side as her servant (and alleged lover), forming a partnership that would prove instrumental to the success and survival of his ideals. It was Juliana that led the political revolution to follow Santolio’s cultural revolt. It was Juliana who wrote On the Derivation of Truth, which calcified Santolio’s ravings into serious theology. And it was Juliana who founded the Santolian Church itself, after Santolio himself was brutally assassinated by supposed Makalan spies. Santolio’s disciples swept the Senate in the wake of his martyrdom and declared war on Makala. Gone were the Philosopher-Princes and local Keaslian assemblies, spewing their high-minded discourse and kowtowing to foreign powers. A new Capaliso was emerging—one that would not tolerate the tyranny of the southern mage elite. It would wage war on anyone who threatened Santolio’s legacy. It would establish its own homegrown religion concerned not with the interests of the magic and the destruction of the gods, but the search for Truth at the “Origin of the Universe.” Santolionism did not simply renew the Capalesian state, it was the Capalesian state. Nationalism and Radicalization This fusion of nationalistic sentiment and mystical religiosity has driven and defined Capalesian identity ever since. To be Capalesian is to be Santolian. To serve the Capalesian state is to serve the Santolian Church. But unlike Marisianism in Sunya, the Church is not a vehicle for state power or a set of static practices and beliefs. The Santolian church has a mind and a life very much of its own, apart from the state. For Santolio’s message did not concern the substance of Truth, but the method by which it might be derived. He did not lay out a mission or a set of beliefs, but opened a path for the endless revelation of new missions and new beliefs; a constant state of epiphany that has spurred Santolianism, and therefore Capaliso, down a path of almost exponential radicalization. Needless to say, Santolianism has evolved over the years, accumulating new agendas and practices as it casts out for new Truths. In its earliest years, this took the form of flowering progressive reform: the abolition of slavery, the democratization of wealth and knowledge, the overhaul of family and patriarchal structures. But all that quickly soured into a sense of resentful moral superiority, shaping Capaliso into a brutal colonizer. The priesthood has launched countless Certamenos—holy wars of expansion and reprisal. At times, official Santolian doctrine has categorized the Potecanese and the Midlanders as sub-human. Perhaps this is in keeping with the invisible, metaphysical will of the universe. Or perhaps when you stare into nothing long enough, you begin to see what you want to see. Santolianism, despite its highly hierarchical clerical structure, has always hinged on the hearts of the populace. The delicate task of the priesthood, as one weary Augur put it, is to “tell the people what they want to hear before they want to hear it.” So the faith has always reflected Capaliso’s most brilliant dreams, as well as its darkest anxieties. And when, thirty years ago, the Empire lost everything it owned at the hands of Potecanse rebels, the Augurs began to report dire signs in their rituals and divination. They saw not just the end of the Empire, but the end of the species—unless Capaliso renewed itself once more and completed its paternalistic domination of humanity. Marisians The Exquisite Faith Official: Church of the Vermilion Bird. The Marisian faith is Sunyan through and through, especially in its contradictions. Its core tenet, which sets itself apart from the rest of the Cosmacans, is the abolition of ego, the submission of humanity to the invisible higher order, the acceptance of death as a part of life, including the eventual extinction of the human race as we know it. Yet the trappings of the church are filled with ego—with splendorous gilded domes and painted ceilings, a hierarchy of lavishly paid, obesely decorated overlords (the priestly Sentous)—all the usual displays of the Sunyan Empire, down to the near deification of the Emperor. In one famous altarpiece, life-sized, spectacularly detailed ivory carvings depict four men facing left, towards the west. The landless serf on the far right kneels and covers his eyes. The gentryman in the next panel bows his head. And in front of him, the Holy Sentout looks upwards. But the Emperor himself, in the left-most panel, looks straight ahead, towards the setting sun. The meaning: only the Emperor, who carries the burden of human civilization in his heart, can see mortality clearly—or as the proverb goes: “At the fore, he sees the horizon first.” The Bifurcated Church This is, of course, preposterous. Everyone can see the horizon at any time as long as it isn’t being blocked by, say, a person standing in front of you. But the Sunyan faith is full of beauteous inscrutability and irrationality, epitomized in the awkward fault line running straight down the middle of the institution. For the faith is not one, but two churches, split along Sunya’s defining landed-landless divide. You will find a quieter, more somber church among the landless, with groggy glass domes instead of polished stone and wood, housing plants and birds instead of great works of art. In these modest greenhouses, the landless Sunyans enjoy their own patch of earth and contemplate the life and death of other beings. The Sentous here do not speak of leadership and horizons, but of sacrifice and loyalty. The landless, they are taught, are by their position disconnected from the earth they will eventually succumb to, that to belong to anything, or to own anything is antithetical to their being. Having no clear knowledge of their fates, they must be directed by their betters through mantras and meditation. The bifurcated church, in all its lofty poetry, and naked oppressions seems a strange, transparently confused organism to outsiders, but anyone who has met a Marisian will know that they are fervently devout, against all reason. Perhaps this is due to its origin: born out of the belly of fiery, calculating nationalism, and somehow also pulled from the ear of deep spiritual contemplation. Nationalist & Spiritual Origins Marisianism was born in a period when Sunya was first aggressively asserting itself—both around the world and on its home island. Keaslianism had been the creed of the age, but this was purged; far too dreary and democratic—and Makalan. The absolutist Emperor needed a totalized moral apparatus to rally the people to his service and elevate him above mere mortality. But he also needed something with a thread of authenticity in it, something that was genuinely Sunyan. So he captured a folk preacher leading a small rebellion and, to the preacher’s great surprise, asked him to found a Sunyan religion. The preacher was Sen Maring, a landless serf and holy man who rejected the Keaslian ideas of death, as some kind of lesser continuation of life. To Maring, the “natural fear” that death instilled in all of us had to have more significance. It couldn’t just be an instinct for survival, he thought, at least not of the self, or even of one’s progeny. In his youth, Maring saw a woman leap into a swarm of poison wasps to rescue a stranger’s child. As she died, he wrote, there was no fear in her eyes, “only a peace, as if she was finally released from a white-knuckled grip. She did not cease to be, but ceased to belong to the prison of herself.” Maring’s conclusion was that the fear of death was but a heavy fog that obscured our true purpose: transformation. Sublimation into something greater. It was his belief that Sunya’s fate was to be sublimated as well, violently, if need be. Legacy & Sunyan Emperor In the end, Maring chose court appointment over violence, surmising that death and transformation might be better facilitated from the side of the Emperor. But perhaps to his own disappointment, Sen Maring’s lasting achievement was the creation of two immortal men. Maring himself lived on in his writings and teachings; transformed, in a way, as Sunyan imperial authorities continue to doctor his texts beyond all recognition. The other immortal man was the Emperor. Upon Maring’s advice, he gave up his name and with it, all markings of individuality, decomposing into the fabric of the empire itself. The Emperor was to be the ultimate example of sagacious self-denial—the enlightened despot who, through his premature death, had the authority and wisdom to guide the empire into transformation. He enacted a symbolic suicide, donned a mask, and transcended to his new status. His biological death, inconsequential in comparison, went unnoted, and he was quietly succeeded by another anonymous man. To this day, no Sunyan Emperor has borne a name, nor does any public record exist of how many there have been, or how successors are chosen. For all appearances, there has only been one, ever transcending Emperor of Sunya since the blessings of Sen Maring, who will die and transform, die and transform, and die and transform, until the earth itself disintegrates into the heavens. The illusion is exquisite. Astorians The Transigent Faith Official: the House of Second Spring. Soon